1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical composition for inhibiting the growth of cancer stem cells, which is capable of inhibiting the growth of cancer stem cells in addition to common cancer cells.
2. Description of Related Art
Cancer has always been one of ten leading causes of death but has increased in its perniciousness to become the first cause of death for 27 years. The main factor causing cancer is that cells become abnormal and keep dividing to form more cells, resulting in cancer.
Western medicine therapy for treatment of cancer, such as surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and biopharmaceutical therapy, is notorious for the distressing side-effects on patients. In view of those difficulties, more and more people opt for the less-radical Chinese medicine therapy. However, for both Chinese and Western medicine therapy, the commercial anticancer drugs can inhibit only growth of cancer cells, i.e., not cancer stem cells.
Cancer stem cells present in tumors are not large in amount, but they are highly resistant to drugs and can generate more cancer cells through cell division resulting in tumors. The aforementioned fact is a thorny problem in treating cancer. The Western chemotherapeutic drugs nowadays can kill only common cancer cells, and cannot efficiently inhibit growth of cancer stem cells. That is, a great amount of standard cancer treatment known in biomedicine has no influence on cancer stem cells. Thereby, to efficiently inhibit growth of cancer stem cells is inevitably advantageous to cancer treatment.
In general, Chinese herbal medicine is considered more moderate and more acceptable than Western chemical forms on the market. Although some clinical treatment results suggest that parts of medical compositions for treating cancer cells are indeed capable of controlling cancer, the efficiency of these medical compositions in inhibiting cancer cells as well as cancer stem cells has not been confirmed.
Accordingly, to develop a medical composition that has the confirmed efficiency in inhibiting cancer cells, particularly the growth of precursor cells (i.e. cancer stem cells), is helpful to cancer treatment.